TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index A > Category: Ambiguity

Ambiguity Quotes (17 quotes)

[Music as a] language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again … to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.
In 'Ceti', The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974), 53.
Science quotes on:  |  Acquaintance (38)  |  Bach (7)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Best (467)  |  Explain (334)  |  Extraterrestrial Life (20)  |  Face (214)  |  Language (308)  |  Music (133)  |  Other (2233)  |  Possible (560)  |  Space (523)  |  Stream (83)  |  Tell (344)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vote (16)

All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.
The Value of Science (1905), in The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method(1946), trans. by George Bruce Halsted, 332.
Science quotes on:  |  Create (245)  |  Creation (350)  |  Depend (238)  |  Dependence (46)  |  Employ (115)  |  Employment (34)  |  Enunciation (7)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Evidently (26)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Free (239)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Fulfillment (20)  |  Language (308)  |  Predict (86)  |  Prediction (89)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Speak (240)  |  Speaking (118)  |  Understand (648)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Will (2350)

Cells are required to stick precisely to the point. Any ambiguity, any tendency to wander from the matter at hand, will introduce grave hazards for the cells, and even more for the host in which they live. … There is a theory that the process of aging may be due to the cumulative effect of imprecision, a gradual degrading of information. It is not a system that allows for deviating.
In 'Information', The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974), 110-111.
Science quotes on:  |  Aging (9)  |  Cell (146)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Degrade (9)  |  Due (143)  |  Effect (414)  |  Gradual (30)  |  Grave (52)  |  Hazard (21)  |  Host (16)  |  Imprecision (2)  |  Information (173)  |  Introduce (63)  |  Live (650)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Point (584)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Process (439)  |  Required (108)  |  System (545)  |  Tendency (110)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Wander (44)  |  Will (2350)

Every rule has its limits, and every concept its ambiguities. Most of all is this true in the science of life, where nothing quite corresponds to our ideas; similar ends are reached by varied means, and no causes are simple.
In Internal Factors in Evolution (1965), 13.
Science quotes on:  |  Biology (232)  |  Cause (561)  |  Concept (242)  |  End (603)  |  Idea (881)  |  Life (1870)  |  Limit (294)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Reach (286)  |  Rule (307)  |  Simple (426)

I believe … that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people … I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and–if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills–on the businessman’s special to Tokyo.
In Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1990), Preface, 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Accessible (27)  |  Alike (60)  |  Belief (615)  |  Book (413)  |  Both (496)  |  Compromise (12)  |  Concept (242)  |  Count (107)  |  Counting (26)  |  Distortion (13)  |  Forget (125)  |  Genre (3)  |  Graduate (32)  |  Graduate Student (13)  |  Hope (321)  |  Intelligent (108)  |  Interest (416)  |  Language (308)  |  Laypeople (2)  |  Movie (21)  |  People (1031)  |  Pill (7)  |  Present (630)  |  Professional (77)  |  Profit (56)  |  Read (308)  |  Richness (15)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Seminar (5)  |  Simplification (20)  |  Sleep (81)  |  Special (188)  |  Still (614)  |  Stink (8)  |  Student (317)  |  Suitable (10)  |  Tokyo (3)

I think people get it upside down when they say the unambiguous is the reality and the ambiguous is merely uncertainty about what is really unambiguous. Let’s turn it around the other way: the ambiguous is the reality and the unambiguous is merely a special case of it, where we finally manage to pin down some very special aspect.
In William Byers, How Mathematicians Think (2007), 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Down (455)  |  Manage (26)  |  Merely (315)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Pin (20)  |  Reality (274)  |  Say (989)  |  Special (188)  |  Special Case (9)  |  Think (1122)  |  Turn (454)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Upside Down (8)  |  Way (1214)

If we consider that part of the theory of relativity which may nowadays in a sense be regarded as bone fide scientific knowledge, we note two aspects which have a major bearing on this theory. The whole development of the theory turns on the question of whether there are physically preferred states of motion in Nature (physical relativity problem). Also, concepts and distinctions are only admissible to the extent that observable facts can be assigned to them without ambiguity (stipulation that concepts and distinctions should have meaning). This postulate, pertaining to epistemology, proves to be of fundamental importance.
'Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity', Lecture delivered to the Nordic Assembly of Naturalists at Gothenburg, 11 Jul 1923. In Nobel Physics 1901-1921 (1998), 482.
Science quotes on:  |  Admissible (6)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Bone (101)  |  Concept (242)  |  Consider (428)  |  Development (441)  |  Distinction (72)  |  Epistemology (8)  |  Extent (142)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  Importance (299)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Major (88)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Motion (320)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Observable (21)  |  Physical (518)  |  Postulate (42)  |  Problem (731)  |  Prove (261)  |  Question (649)  |  Regard (312)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sense (785)  |  State (505)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Relativity (33)  |  Turn (454)  |  Two (936)  |  Whole (756)

In medicine … beware of ambiguity.
In A Philosophical Dictionary (1824), Vol. 1, 39.
Science quotes on:  |  Beware (16)  |  Medicine (392)

It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
In Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony(1984), 209.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Center (35)  |  Code (31)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Making (300)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Ought (3)  |  Poetry (150)  |  Seven (5)  |   Wallace Stevens (3)  |  Strangeness (10)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Time (1911)  |  Type (171)  |  Wait (66)

Journalists do not like to report on uncertainties. They would almost rather be wrong than ambiguous.
In 'How Journalists Regard Their Field', Christian Science Monitor (23 Jan 1985).
Science quotes on:  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Do (1905)  |  Journalist (8)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Wrong (246)

Most classifications, whether of inanimate objects or of organisms, are hierarchical. There are “higher” and “lower” categories, there are higher and lower ranks. What is usually overlooked is that the use of the term “hierarchy” is ambiguous, and that two fundamentally different kinds of arrangements have been designated as hierarchical. A hierarchy can be either exclusive or inclusive. Military ranks from private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, up to general are a typical example of an exclusive hierarchy. A lower rank is not a subdivision of a higher rank; thus, lieutenants are not a subdivision of captains. The scala naturae, which so strongly dominated thinking from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, is another good illustration of an exclusive hierarchy. Each level of perfection was considered an advance (or degradation) from the next lower (or higher) level in the hierarchy, but did not include it.
The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (1982), 205-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Arrangement (93)  |  Captain (16)  |  Century (319)  |  Classification (102)  |  Consider (428)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Different (595)  |  Exclusive (29)  |  Fundamental (264)  |  General (521)  |  Good (906)  |  Hierarchy (17)  |  Illustration (51)  |  Inanimate (18)  |  Include (93)  |  Inclusive (4)  |  Kind (564)  |  Level (69)  |  Military (45)  |  Most (1728)  |  Next (238)  |  Object (438)  |  Organism (231)  |  Overlook (33)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Rank (69)  |  Term (357)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Usually (176)

Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you’ll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won’t get started. It requires a lovely balance.
'You and Your Research', Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, 7 Mar 1986.
Science quotes on:  |  Balance (82)  |  Belief (615)  |  Create (245)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Enough (341)  |  Error (339)  |  Fault (58)  |  Flaw (18)  |  Forward (104)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatness (55)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  Notice (81)  |  People (1031)  |  Replacement (13)  |  Require (229)  |  Requirement (66)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Something (718)  |  Start (237)  |  Step (234)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Toleration (7)  |  Truth (1109)

On the whole, I cannot help saying that it appears to me not a little extraordinary, that a theory so new, and of such importance, overturning every thing that was thought to be the best established in chemistry, should rest on so very narrow and precarious a foundation, the experiments adduced in support of it being not only ambiguous or explicable on either hypothesis, but exceedingly few. I think I have recited them all, and that on which the greatest stress is laid, viz. That of the formation of water from the decomposition of the two kinds of air, has not been sufficiently repeated. Indeed it required so difficult and expensive an apparatus, and so many precautions in the use of it, that the frequent repetition of the experiment cannot be expected; and in these circumstances the practised experimenter cannot help suspecting the accuracy of the result and consequently the certainty of the conclusion.
Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston (1796), 57-8.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (81)  |  Air (366)  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Apparatus (70)  |  Being (1276)  |  Best (467)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Decomposition (19)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Establish (63)  |  Exceedingly (28)  |  Expect (203)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimenter (40)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Extraordinary (83)  |  Formation (100)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Importance (299)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Kind (564)  |  Little (717)  |  Narrow (85)  |  New (1273)  |  Precarious (6)  |  Repeat (44)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Required (108)  |  Rest (287)  |  Result (700)  |  Stress (22)  |  Support (151)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Two (936)  |  Use (771)  |  Water (503)  |  Whole (756)

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.
Arithmetices Principia, (1889)
Science quotes on:  |  Examine (84)  |  Foundation (177)  |  Importance (299)  |  Lack (127)  |  Language (308)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Problem (731)  |  Question (649)  |  Recent (78)  |  Solution (282)  |  Still (614)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Why (491)  |  Word (650)

Suppose that you are in love with a lady on Neptune and that she returns the sentiment. It will be some consolation for the melancholy separation if you can say to yourself at some possibly pre-arranged moment, “She is thinking of me now.” Unfortunately a difficulty has arisen because we have had to abolish Now. There is no absolute Now, but only the various relative Nows, differing according to their reckoning of different observers and covering the whole neutral wedge which at the distance of Neptune is about eight hours thick. She will have to think of you continuously for eight hours on end in order to circumvent the ambiguity “Now.”
In The Nature of the Physical World (1929), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Abolish (13)  |  Absolute (153)  |  Accord (36)  |  According (236)  |  Circumvent (2)  |  Consolation (9)  |  Continuously (7)  |  Covering (14)  |  Different (595)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Distance (171)  |  End (603)  |  Hour (192)  |  Lady (12)  |  Love (328)  |  Melancholy (17)  |  Moment (260)  |  Neptune (13)  |  Neutral (15)  |  Observer (48)  |  Order (638)  |  Possibly (111)  |  Reckon (31)  |  Reckoning (19)  |  Relative (42)  |  Return (133)  |  Say (989)  |  Separation (60)  |  Suppose (158)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thinking (425)  |  Unfortunately (40)  |  Various (205)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

There is probably no other science which presents such different appearances to one who cultivates it and to one who does not, as mathematics. To this person it is ancient, venerable, and complete; a body of dry, irrefutable, unambiguous reasoning. To the mathematician, on the other hand, his science is yet in the purple bloom of vigorous youth, everywhere stretching out after the “attainable but unattained” and full of the excitement of nascent thoughts; its logic is beset with ambiguities, and its analytic processes, like Bunyan’s road, have a quagmire on one side and a deep ditch on the other and branch off into innumerable by-paths that end in a wilderness.
In 'The Theory of Transformation Groups', (A review of Erster Abschnitt, Theorie der Transformationsgruppen (1888)), Bulletin New York Mathematical Society (1893), 2 (First series), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Analytic (11)  |  Ancient (198)  |  Appearance (145)  |  Attain (126)  |  Bloom (11)  |  Body (557)  |  Branch (155)  |  John Bunyan (5)  |  Complete (209)  |  Cultivate (24)  |  Deep (241)  |  Different (595)  |  Ditch (2)  |  Dry (65)  |  End (603)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Excitement (61)  |  Innumerable (56)  |  Irrefutable (5)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Nascent (4)  |  Nature Of Mathematics (80)  |  On The Other Hand (40)  |  Other (2233)  |  Path (159)  |  Person (366)  |  Present (630)  |  Process (439)  |  Purple (4)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Road (71)  |  Side (236)  |  Stretch (39)  |  Thought (995)  |  Unambiguous (6)  |  Venerable (7)  |  Vigorous (21)  |  Wilderness (57)  |  Youth (109)

This is the element that distinguishes applied science from basic. Surprise is what makes the difference. When you are organized to apply knowledge, set up targets, produce a usable product, you require a high degree of certainty from the outset. All the facts on which you base protocols must be reasonably hard facts with unambiguous meaning. The challenge is to plan the work and organize the workers so that it will come out precisely as predicted. For this, you need centralized authority, elaborately detailed time schedules, and some sort of reward system based on speed and perfection. But most of all you need the intelligible basic facts to begin with, and these must come from basic research. There is no other source. In basic research, everything is just the opposite. What you need at the outset is a high degree of uncertainty; otherwise it isn’t likely to be an important problem. You start with an incomplete roster of facts, characterized by their ambiguity; often the problem consists of discovering the connections between unrelated pieces of information. You must plan experiments on the basis of probability, even bare possibility, rather than certainty.
The Planning of Science, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, (1974) .
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Science (36)  |  Apply (170)  |  Authority (99)  |  Bare (33)  |  Base (120)  |  Basic (144)  |  Basic Research (15)  |  Basis (180)  |  Begin (275)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Challenge (91)  |  Connection (171)  |  Consist (223)  |  Degree (277)  |  Detail (150)  |  Difference (355)  |  Element (322)  |  Everything (489)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Hard (246)  |  High (370)  |  Incomplete (31)  |  Information (173)  |  Intelligible (35)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Meaning (244)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Organize (33)  |  Other (2233)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Plan (122)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Predict (86)  |  Probability (135)  |  Problem (731)  |  Product (166)  |  Require (229)  |  Research (753)  |  Reward (72)  |  Set (400)  |  Speed (66)  |  Start (237)  |  Surprise (91)  |  System (545)  |  Target (13)  |  Time (1911)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.